dijous, 13 de setembre de 2012

We are glad to announce that Astor Förlag has just acquired translation rights into Swedish of Ricardo Adolfo's novel 'Depois de morrer aconteceram-me
muitas cosas' (published by
Alfaguara Portugal, 2009).

Rights were
previously sold in France to Editions
Métailié

Lots
Happened to Me After I Died

by Ricardo
Adolfo

Alfaguara
Portugal, 2009

* Included in
the list of the Best Books published in Portugal in 2009 (Leer Magazine)

“From
Amsterdam, where he lives, young Portuguese writer Ricardo Adolfo observes his
country with fierce and slashing irony. Only from afar can you see this close.
A writer that Portugal needs to discover.”

"If an
Author is easily identified by an originality of style, a coherence of
inspiration and a capacity to impress, then Ricardo Adolfo is clearly, along
with João Tordo, the most notable writer of his generation". Newspaper Sol (Portugal)

Lots
Happened to Me After I Died,
by Ricardo Adolfo, was
selected as the first and leading title in Portuguese language to be published
by Alfaguara Portugal, the
Portuguese branch of Santillana Group (Spain), launched in September 2009.

***

A young couple and
their son, recently arrived illegal immigrants in a big city, are left stranded
halfway home when their tube train breaks down. It soon becomes clear they
don’t know any alternative route home – and nor can they ask for help as they
don’t speak a word of the local language.

Portuguese cover of the novel

Confused, they
walk through streets carrying their son inside a newly bought suitcase that
doubles as a pram. By turns they are chased by two frightened women in hijab,
abandoned by a runaway bus driver, robbed by a gang of street kids, and finally
end up stealing a spare sleeping bag from a homeless man. The family’s
traditional Sunday outing around the shopping streets – streets littered with
bankruptcies and boarded-up façades – becomes a 24-hour marathon of revelations
and confrontations that could make the couple inseparable, or could tear them
apart.

Narrated by the
husband, a loner locked inside his own mind, who believes that to make a good
decision he has to do just the opposite of what he thinks is right, the novel
explores the internal fight of someone forced into seclusion because he is
unable to communicate with the world around him.

Combining a
fast-paced narrative, quirky dialogues and a strong visual sense with an
unflinching social conscience, Lots Happened to Me After I Died exposes the struggle of ‘internal’ immigration –
much more overwhelming than any physical displacement.

Ricardo Adolfo is an Angolan-born Portuguese writer. Currently
he is based in Tokyo. In 2006 Dom Quixote published his debut novel Mizé. Mizé was very well received in Portugal and has
subsequently been translated into Spanish (Suma) under the title of La
peluquera de Lisboa, German
(Berlin Verlag/Bloomsbury Berlin) and Dutch (Querido).In 2010 it was been reprinted in Portugal by
Alfaguara Portugal, who have already acquired rights of his new novel (still in
progress). In 2012 Alfaguara Portugal will reprint Adolfo’s first published
book, a compilation of short stories.

In 2007 he was
creative consultant of the short film There’s Only One Sun, shot by award-winning director Wong Kar-Wai. (See it here)

Lots
Happened to Me After I Died
is Ricardo’s third book. It continues to explore some of the author’s favourite
themes, such as the mixture between the banal and the uncanny, and the peaks of
tension in the ordinary and mundane.

His writing has been
praised for its “…maverick writing, sober and elevated, with an amazingly
fine-tuned sense of oral syntax. The dialogue is perfect. Nothing in literature
is harder than ‘natural dialogue’…”
Fernando Venâncio, writer and critic.

* “Lots
happened to me after I died”
is a big, enjoyable surprise. Ricardo Adolfo is able to easily pass on those
problems that are common to all emigrants: from feeling invisible in the host
country, to the uncertainty about the future, the exploitation suffered, the
quest for symbols of personal success, etc.

“Diario Digital”
(Portugal)

Astor
Förlag is a young Swedish
publishing house looking for new, young and literary voices to be translated
for the first time in Sweden. Amongst their authors we find Mercedes
Cebrián, Elvira Navarro or Andrés Barba.

Éditions
Métailié is well known in France
for introducing important voices from the Portuguese language,such as José Saramago, Lidia Jorge, Mia Couto,
Antonio Lobo Antunes or José
Eduardo Agualusa.

This
recent acquisition confirms Ricardo Adolfo as one of the most interesting and
promising new Portuguese voices.